Michael Swickard's new novel about New Mexico

New Mexico Business Journal - The number of New Mexico families receiving food stamps rose by 25.4 percent in 2011, to 13 percent of the state’s households, according to figures released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of families in the state receiving food stamps grew to 99,329 during the year, up from 79,217 in 2009, or 10.7 percent of households. News New Mexico

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – Poor sanitation and evidence of lice and fleas at the Occupy San Francisco encampment endanger the health of everyone in the overcrowded, makeshift tent city at Justin Herman Plaza, public health officials said Wednesday. “Everybody that’s been down there knows it has to change,” said Dr. Tomas Aragon, a public health officer who has been conducting inspections twice a day at the Occupy SF protest. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Santa Fe New Mexican - A Santa Fe man who has admitted to at least nine drunken-driving convictions will be released from jail again next week after reaching a plea agreement Thursday. Daniel LeFebre, 47, has been in the county jail since May 24, 2010, when Santa Fe police arrested him on Cerrillos Road on suspicion of DWI. The district attorney said problems with evidence in the arrest caused prosecutors to reach a deal in which not all of his prior DWI convictions factored into his sentence. His guilty plea Thursday was recognized only as a fourth offense and could only carry a maximum 18-month sentence.

Assistant District Attorney Jason Lidyard said there were "evidentiary issues and witness unavailability" at the time LeFebre was scheduled to go to trial Thursday. Prosecutors offered a plea agreement to LeFebre that would guarantee a felony conviction without risking acquittal by a jury. "We approved this plea," District Attorney Angela "Spence" Pacheco said Thursday. "This is a plea that has him pleading guilty to a felony in a case that definitely had a lot of questions. This guarantees he has another provable conviction for down the road if it ever should come up that he's caught driving drunk again." Read full story here: News New Mexico

NM Business Journal - Intel on Wednesday unveiled a new chip that can operate at a speed of 1 terfalop -- or one trillion calculations per second. Computerworld reports that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip-maker -- which debuted the chip at the SC11 Supercomputing Conference in Seattle -- has made a terflop chip before, but this is the first marked for production. The company didn't disclose when the chip, called "Knights Corner," would be commercially available. In 1997, a supercomputer at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque used nearly 10,000 Intel Pentium processors to reach one trillion calculations per second. It cost the federal government $55 million. Intel is Rio Rancho's largest private employer with about 3,200 workers. Read full story here: News New Mexico

KOB TV - The Rio Grande runs drier through irrigation of New Mexico farms each day. Only four inches or irrigation water is expected for farmers south of Elephant Butte Dam this year. Many farmers in the Elephant Butte area are expecting even less next year. Read full story here: News New Mexico

From KOAT-TV.com - ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- KOAT medical expert Dr. Barry Ramo said new research suggests coffee may be good for a person's health. Previous studies have shown that regular coffee drinkers have less diabetes, Ramo said. Last month, researchers from the 51,000 Women Nurses' Health Study found that more coffee women consume, the less likely they were to be depressed. Now, Ramo said a report found that Basal Cell cancer is 20 percent less frequent it those who consumed more than three cups of coffee each day. Ramo said the health benefits for men were less impressive. Decaffeinated coffee had no effect either way, according to Ramo. Read more

From NM Politics.net - by Michael Swickard, Ph.D. - At a fast food style restaurant, I had a nodding relationship with the young fellow behind the counter. We would each say, “Howdy.” Last week he ventured an observation, “You sure were lucky to be young when it was still possible to become wealthy.” He said it like, “Nice weather… how about those Aggies… whatcha want?” I was startled by the notion that I grew up in a better time. Truth is, I only went to school because I was physically placed on a school bus with instructions to not hit anyone. For the record, I only hit back, but the second kid is usually the one caught, so I was typecast. I was also typecast as a kid who could not wait to get away from school. This they got right. I was born in 1950, and this fellow behind the counter was born in 1990. Without a doubt they were different societies. In school I practiced the “Atomic bomb attack drill,” while he has to worry about getting a bad case of “Texting thumb.” Read more